Review: Metabones Speed Booster (Canon FD to Fuji X)

The Speed Booster with Canon FD 35mm f/2 – This combo is now a 25mm f/1.4

After what was for many an excruciating wait, Metabones has released their generally well-regarded Speed Booster in Canon FD and Minolta MD mounts. As someone with a rather extensive stable of FD lenses (thanks partly to my father), I was extremely excited by this news. If you’re a frequent visitor to the site, you may have ready my review of the Zhongyi Lens Turbo, a Speed Booster clone, in which I lamented the lack of an FD Speed Booster. You may also remember that while the Lens Turbo works well with some lenses, it can be quite poor with other lenses.

Enter the original. Metabones released their first Speed Boosters back in January of this year, and they’ve been quite a success. Let’s take a look at how this new FD mount Speed Booster works in real world application, and if it truly is worth the significantly higher price tag over the cheaper Zhongyi knockoff.

What does the Speed Booster do?

If you’ve not seen one of these before, it can be rather confusing. Teleconverters have been around for a very long time, and most photographers know they are a nice way to gain some extra length on their lenses without having to carry around a separate lens. On the down side, teleconverters generally decrease image quality a little, and you lose one stop of light on a 1.4x teleconverter, and two stops of light on a 2x teleconverter.

The Speed Booster does exactly the opposite. It is a 0.71x wide-converter, and you will actually gain image sharpness (in theory), while gaining a full stop of light. When used on an APS-C camera, this allows a lens to be used and have almost exactly its full frame field of view when used on an APS-C camera. So, for instance, a 50mm f/1.4 lens will be turned into a 35mm f/1.0 lens. With APS-C sensor, this 35mm combination gives you the field of view of a 53mm lens on full frame – very close to the lens’ original field of view on full-frame. And, because the lens speed is also increased by a stop, the depth of field and background blur the lens produces will also be extremely similar to how the lens performs on a full frame camera. The long and short of it is, the Speed Booster allows you to take full frame SLR lenses and use them on an APS-C camera with the optical properties of using them on a full-frame camera.

The Canon FL 55mm f/1.2 on the Speed Booster – This combination becomes a 39mm f/0.9, which has the same field of view and depth of field as a 58mm f/1.3 lens does on full frame.

This is a great boon to APS-C shooters who may sometimes want that full-frame shallow depth of field look, but don’t otherwise want to carry around larger lenses for the most part. Or, if you have a large stable of manual focus lenses and want to use them at their original field of view, this will allow you to do that.

The Speed Booster is available for Sony E-mount, Fuji X-mount and Micro 4/3 (though Micro 4/3 users won’t get the ‘full frame’ look, but rather closer to APS-C). Metabones currently makes Speed Boosters compatible with Alpa, Contax/Yashica, Canon EF (E-mount only), Leica R, Contarex, Nikon G, Sony A (E-Mount only), and now Canon FD and Minolta MD. They retail for $399 for the simple mechanical versions and $599 for the Canon EF to Sony E-Mount version, which has electronics to allow for autofocus and auto-aperture control. The Nikon G version is $429, as it contains a separate aperture diaphragm for use with G lenses.

Build Quality

The Metabones FD to Fuji X Speed Booster

The Metabones Speed Booster is a very well constructed piece of kit. It is solid metal throughout, with chromium-plated brass mount plates for both the mount to the camera and to the lens. The FD version has a rotating ring with an ON/OFF designation, which is used to activate the aperture lever, allowing the lens aperture to be changed. This is needed on the FD mount speed booster, because the Canon FD mount is a breech-lock style mount. Therefore, the mounting surfaces between the camera and lens do not move against each other when mounting the lens. You must turn the ring to OFF before mounting a lens, then switch it to ON to enable aperture control.

The Metabones also includes an Arca-Swiss compatible tripod foot mount that is integral to the adapter. If you are using the Speed Booster with heavier lenses that lack their own tripod collar, this can be helpful to relieve stress on the camera mount. As almost all lenses that I will be using with the Speed Booster are relatively small, I removed the tripod mount upon opening the Speed Booster. Metabones provides the allen wrench needed to remove the tripod foot as well as two plastic plugs to insert into the screw holes once it’s removed.

The Portal to the Full Frame Look

The optical elements on the Speed Booster are very prominent, and they seem to float in the center of the adapter. Care must be taken when mounting an FD lens due to the long aperture lever. While I didn’t try to see if the adapter is built-in a way that prevented you from scraping the lever against the optics, it certainly looks possible to do if you are careless, so pay attention when mounting your lenses.

Overall, the Speed Booster is a solid, well machined adapter that feels quite premium. It also has a fair bit of heft to it. One nice thing that Metabones allows is infinity adjustment. While they adjust it at the factory to enable infinity focus if the lens is perfectly calibrated, they do allow you to adjust if your infinity stop is off on your lenses. Indeed, my lenses predominantly focused to infinity just fine with the exception of my FD 35mm f/2, which couldn’t quite get there, though stopping down to f/8 or so would bring that into focus. If I planned on shooting with this lens regularly at infinity, I can simply loosen the optic set screw, rotate the optics and re-set until infinity focus was achieved. As I will be using that lens mostly for environmental portraiture, I felt no need to adjust the infinity stop.

as an owner of the NF to X mount speedbooster , i find all your opinions to be valid …. thanks for an excellent review , and for clairifying the pixel well issue … the images with the speedbooster are truly full frame character and oof degree on apsc , a small miracle , i hope your excellent review will sway the incredulous leading to more
acceptance of this wonderful device, and more companies producing them

It only works for full frame lenses because the Speed Booster condenses the full frame image circle into an APS-C sized image circle, so putting an APS-C lens on it will yield an image circle smaller than the sensor:result, big black edges.

this is actually not entirely true – at least some APS-C lenses can and have been used successfully through MB speed booster. One of such was Canon’s EF-S 10-22 1.6x crop zoom. At about 12mm image circle is already wide enough, although with some slight vignetting; but from 14mm even vignette is mostly gone:https://www.flickr.com/photos/8497177@N03/8461690496/

excellent reviews here 😀

Have you ever considered a write up concerning the substantial advantages that APS-C setup has over FF for wildlife/sports/fast action shooters:
– foremost 1.5x reach advantage in securing the same FOV, as esp. in wildlife shooting every inch of working distance to one’s target counts;
– faster, usually much faster frame rates, as high FPS coupled with shorter min. shutter speeds are much harder to attain on FF platform – except at the top tier pro FF bodies they do struggle to offer 2-3 FPS, whereas APS-C flies with 8-12 FPS, and the newest Samusung N1even climbed to15 FPS;
– much quicker and sustainable AF’ing speed and continuous tracking at high FPS;

Very nice piece, Jordan. I need to adjust mine (FD) because none of my lenses reach infinity. Also, the ring that engages the aperture mechanisms is virtually identical to the “preset” rings found on many old lenses from the era of stopped-down metering. This allows one to preset the aperture, open the aperture to focus, then quickly return it for the shot.

Thank you for this excellent piece! Your review provided all of the information I’ve needed to make a decision about the Speed Booster. I’m going to purchase it for use with a 50mm F/1.4 MD ROKKOR-X on my Sony NEX-7. Once I’ve had some experience with it, I’ll share anything relevant and useful here.

In the UK via ebay, the Lens Turbo is available for £78 ($125) whilst the Speed Booster is £478 ($763). Given the speed booster is 7x the price of the Lens Turbo, how would that affect your opinion (if you had to pay UK prices)?

Wow, really? As I said in my Lens Turbo review, it’s worth the $125. It’s just not worth any more than that because fast lenses do experience some fairly significant optical compromises with the Lens Turbo.

The Speed Booster is, in my opinion, also worth it’s price (well, the US price). Hard to say if it’s goinging to be worth the price for you.

The big difference for me is that I can see myself using the SB with my 55/1.2 and 35/2 for serious photographic work as a somewhat daily carry. I see the Lens Turbo as a device that can give you a certain look when you absolutely need it, but the optical degradation outside of the center on fast lenses would keep it squarely in the ‘special use’ category.

That said, if you are adapting slowish telephoto lenses, the Lens Turbo works pretty well. My MD 135/2.8 works very well with it.

Hi Jordan, whe you say that ” While the two 50mm lenses performed near identically” you mean identically to what? to the standard adapter? I have only 50mm fd lenses and if so it would make much sense a speed booster for me…

To each other. The new FD 50mm f/1.4 and the FD 50mm f/1.4 SSC worked well, and essentially identical to each other (though the new FD had slightly more blur, oddly enough). The 55/1.2 worked the best of the three, and is really excellent on the speed booster.

The reason to use the speed booster is not to improve the MTF in my opinion. It’s to get similar FOV and depth if field as the lens on a full frame camera. If you have no need for that, the I wouldn’t spend the money. If you do have that need, it works quite well.

Yes, but remember that ultra-fast lenses won’t show that stop in transmission due to pixel shading. Optically, you’ll be that stop faster, but the camera maxes out in exposure at about f/1.1 or so, so don’t expect a full stop of light with an f/1.4 or f/1.2 lens on the Speed Booster.

I use them for different purposes. I pretty much use the FD when I want that super shallow DOF look, which isn’t all that often. If I could only take one, it’d be the Fuji 35…AF makes it more versatile and it’s very good from 1.4. Stopped down its a little better on the extreme edges too.

It’s very lens dependent. I wouldn’t say telephotos work better or worse than wides. My FD 35mm f/2 works brilliantly on it. If it’s a good lens, it should at least be decent on the speed booster. Some lenses may even be better.

So when you use this what type of settings do you set the Fuji X-E2 into? I get that it is manual focus, which is great, but do you have to tell the camera what aperature setting it is and it can decide the shutter speed approriately? Just curious about the general settings used when using this speed adapter. Thanks! Great shots by the way and this makes me want to get my X-E2 sooner rather than later so I can use my Canon FD glass from my father’s Canon AE-1 setup he has had since the late 1970s!

The camera is metering in real time. When you stop down, the sensor receives less light and adjusts the shutter speed accordingly. The camera does not need to know what aperture the lens is at, it just meters based on the amount of light reaching the sensor.

When using a manual lens, just set the AF to manual mode on the camera. If you want to shoot in aperture priority mode, just set aperture on the lens as you desire, the shutter speed to auto and away you go.

Hi. I hadn’t taken a ton of photos stopped down with the Speed Booster when I wrote the review. I took several test shots with several lenses stopped down to check sharpness and aberrations so I could ensure it worked well at those apertures, but none that I would view as worthy of presentation. I have since added a shot in the sample images at f/8 (f/11 on the lens) with the 55/1.2 on the Speed Booster.

Hi, I was wondering if you did any tests with any ultra wide lens like the 17mm f/4 FD? Similarly if you would consider doing a shot with the 55mm 1.2 with and speed booster and then replicated with a plain adapter (such as possible with the different crop) to see the effect of the bokeh.

Also I notice it does not seem possible to actually buy one of these at the moment, any insights on availability?

I was also wondering how it will turn out with WA/UWA lenses – I am planning on using a Zeiss 18mm f/3.5 (Nikon Mount), besides the usual 50mm and 85mm, on the Fuji X-E2 and am wondering if I must expect any severe compromises?!

You are mistakenly thinking that the crop factor does anything to the focal length, which it most assuredly does not. The magnification factor of the Speed Booster is 0.71x. 55×0.71 = 39mm. That is the focal length of the combination. Period. The crop factor of the camera body does not change the focal length one iota. The focal length is a property of the lens and the lens ONLY.

Now, it has the field of view of a 58mm lens on a full frame camera (1.5x39mm = 58.5mm), but the focal length of the combination is 39mm. The camera crop factor is only a reference for field of view for shooters who are accustomed to using the 135 format and know what a certain focal length looks like on that format…nothing more.

I understand you are providing info on the true lens focal lengths, but I still feel that the article is somewhat confusing – as Hughes perhaps did.

For most, when you say (for example) a FF 50mm lens on a crop factor body like the Fuji-X (1.5 x crop APS-C) using a SB becomes a 35mm – they assume they will get greater coverage. My understanding is that they will not, they will get a 53.25mm focal length equivalent (50mm x .071 x 1.5, same as using a Fuji-XF 35mm – 35mm x 1.5 = 52.5mm). I would suggest that everyone who uses an APS-C system already thinks in terms of crop, and considering the SB only works on crop body cameras, then why even bring a FF equivalent measurement into the discussion?

They do get greater coverage. They move from a 50mm lens to a 35mm lens. That’s wider coverage. And it’s wider coverage by a factor similar to the lesser coverage of the smaller sensor. The speed booster turns a 50mm f/1.4 into a 35mm f/1.0. That’s what it does.

I frankly hate how ‘crop factor’ was originally explained to shooters. It has caused so much confusion by people being sloppy with terminology, saying things like “on this camera, your 50mm lens becomes an 80mm lens.” No…no it doesn’t.

Most APS-C shooters don’t even have a full frame reference point, so why should they even compare at all?

Anyway, I have revised the text slightly to hopefully reduce the confusion.

I get that what you’re saying is technically correct, but we aren’t physicists, we’re photographers. The focal technical focal length of a lens (0.71x. 55×0.71 = 39mm) has little relation to the actual user experience and application of the lens. If you’re trying to help people by writing this article, all you’ve done is further convolute the issue.

Lenses are universally discussed in terms of their 135-equivalent field of view – be it APS-C, micro 4/3, or medium format. It’s what we all relate these back to to gain an understanding of a lenses application.

If you’re trying to make the issue easier to understand, please consider using field of view as a reference. As it is, you’re only further confusing everyone through this technical, pedant math.

I am very disappointed to read about this “Pixel Shading” that I was not aware of. When I bought the Metabones Speed Booster there was no mention about this limitation; I expected one full stop boost without any limits as their website implies. Is this Pixel Shading addressed in any of the Metabones documents? I may have not bought it since the main attraction for me was my Minolta 58mm/F1.2 becoming a fast F0.85; now your review implies that F1.1 is the best it does.

It’s nothing to do with the optics. Your lens would become an f/0.85 lens, and will show all optical properties from that aperture, such as depth of field. However, there is a SENSOR limitation with regards to ultra fast aperture. On the Fuji X cameras, it appears to be around f/1.1, where faster than that doesn’t result in faster shutter speeds for the same exposure.

The pixel shading is basically the limit where the aperture is maxed out by the effective aperture of the actual micro lenses over each pixel in the sensor. When these are the limiting factor, you effectively hit the aperture limit for the sensor.

Hi Jordan
I just bought canon fd Fuji x speed booster.
When it’s arrived the back is protruding way inside. So even could not be attached to Fuji x pro 1 body.
That’s why I adjust the infinity.
I used it on canon FL 55/1.2 and FD 135/2
On FL 55/1.2 I adjust the infinity, even until the speed booster optic element meet with the lens back element, it still can’t reach infinity.
When I use the regular adapter this lens work well.
I could not achieve infinity on 135/2 also with 55/1.2 setting.
But actually I could adjust more on 135/2 since the back of the lens is deeper.

Since you also using the same lenses, do you achieve infinity especially for 55/1.2 ?
Do you have any ideas how to resolve my case?
Thanks a lot Jordan

Hey Jordan! Thank you for the great review! It got me really interested in the Speed Booster!
Just a quick question: when manual focusing on the X-Pro1 with the Speed Booster, are you limited to Electronic VF only, or does the camera show up the focus squares in green once focus is achieved with the Optical VF?

Wow, thanks for the great explanation, Jordan. I kept hearing about Speed Booster but always skip it b/c I did not actually know what exactly it does (or got good explanation) and skeptical about the IQ degration caused by any adapter. However, your sample images did say it all. I am portrait shooter who loves bokeh and shallow DOF and thats’ why I still hesitate to make a move to Fuji. This will definitely provide a great alternative although Manual focus proves to be difficult when shooting young children who constantly move around.

This is brilliant option for portrait shooter like you and I who dearly misses shallow DOF. Your knowledge and the photos speak for themselves, great job. I’m thinking of moving to Fuji system in a year and would love to play with this option. Can you share your experience on how you set aperture and speed manually when shooting with these FD lenses? I find it difficult to shoot young kids like mine who constantly move around so even with AF, it’s already challenging. I gradually learn to “set and anticipate” but would be great to hear from your experience.

Great review that I’ve referred back to several times. I have the same Metabones speedbooster Fuji X to Canon FD. I’ve done my own informal tests using the following FDn lenses: 24mm f2.8, 28mm f2.8, 50mm f1.8, 100mm f2.8, including the Fuji X 35mm f1.4 for comparison. All tests used printed patterns placed in center and at the edge of frame, shot at f2.8 and f8 at varying distances to make the sizes of the test patterns virtually the same… tripod, cable release, ISO 200 with studio lights, several takes to get the best focus.. basically due diligence.

Surprising results actually. Like with your findings, IQ in the center of all lenses is brilliant. The 24 and 28 seem to suffer terribly from the edge until about 1/3 of the way into the frame. The 50mm as well, but to a lesser extent, but I suspect on a full frame it was never a stellar performer on the frame edge (based on http://erphotoreview.com/). Even at f8 the 24/28 are still fairly weak on that 1/3 edge which was disappointing as I don’t feel great using these for landscape work now. The 50mm sharpens up quiet well corner to corner by f8. The real surprise was the 100mm f2.8, which was brilliant corner to corner even at f2.8. My experience with the 100mm seems to line up with your comments on the 135mm and 55mm, as the IQ seemed unaffected by the adapter.

Comparing against the Fuji X 35mm, I found the Fuji a hair sharper than the 50mm in the center at f2.8 and enormously better on the frame edge. By f8 both the Fuji and Canon are fairly close, with perhaps the Fuji a hair sharper, but it was really a toss up by f8. What floored me was the Canon FDn 100mm f2.8. It was definitely a hair or two sharper than the Fuji X 35mm, both at f2.8 and f8, corner to corner. I’m not sure how that’s possible given the reputation of the Fuji 35mm, but I saw it for myself, so I’m a believer.

For my part, I’m very curious to see how the Canon FDn 35mm f2.8 performs corner to corner as a walk around lens, and compare the 50mm 1.4 against the 1.8… something for another day.

Could you please be more specific about “that full-frame look”? It appears that apart from shatter speed and return to the actual focal length (50mm will be 50mm again) “that full-frame look” is the only advantage we get vs. barrel distortion and corner resolution.

A few things. First, the focal length doesn’t ‘return to the actual focal length’. It’s a common misconception, but the focal length is a property of the lens and doesn’t change with format. What the Speed Booster does is act as a wide-angle converter that is roughly equivalent to the crop factor. So a 50mm f/1.4 lens will actively change focal length and effective aperture when mounted on the Speed Booster (as a combo) to a 35mm f/1.0 lens. Then, with the crop factor, you’ll have the same field of view as a 52mm lens would on full-frame.

The ‘full-frame look’ I’m referring to is the shallow depth of field capabilities that are hard to come by on smaller sensors. Because you need a 35mm f/1.0 on APS-C to get the same depth of field and angle of view as a 50mm f/1.4, and there are very few 35mm f/1.0 lenses, it’s hard to achieve the look of a 50/1.4 on the smaller sensor. The Speed Booster takes that 50/1.4 and turns it into the 35mm f/1.0 that is needed to provide the same depth of field. Effectively, it means the lens acts similarly to how it would on a full frame sensor.

And yes, the advantage is some extra speed for shutter speed and shallower depth of field. If you don’t have a need for either, then the Speed Booster doesn’t make a ton of sense, especially as APS-C mirrorless offerings have excellent native glass to fill all the field of view needs.

I purchased it a few weeks ago. Unfortunately the construction of the SB will not allow it to hit infinity. Yes, you can FOCUS on infinity, but if you set your lens (any Canon FD, I tried 6 of them) on infinity mark, it will be out of focus. It means you will pass infinity. Correspondingly if you set your lens on 3 feet – it will focus from about 4.5 inches more. It means for the actual camera position in focus 40.5 inches from the target the lens will show 36 inches.

Yes, I tried to move SB optics the way it is provided. To achieve appropriate lens-distance setting one will need optical block to the position it will hit the lens back.

It is quite obvious to me that SB designer decided to sacrifice correspondence of infinity focus to lens markings to ability to actually make this SB.

I find it in a hard way. After using SB for a few weeks I realized it scratched a circular scratch on the coating of my Canon FD 85/1.2. Infinity was ALMOST on. When I moved optical block of the SB from the lens back the passing infinity effect appeared.

Conclusion: if you don’t care to loose a few inches on the closest focusing distance and having past infinity, and is OK with a strong barrel distortion – the SB is working “as it should”.

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